Serious Talk

  Take him seriously but not literally. -- Trump supporters
   "We're putting them (Iranians) on notice." -- Michael Flynn, national security advisor.
   "Iran doesn't appreciate how 'kind' Obama was to them. Not me. They're not behaving." Donald Trump

   Translation: Behave yourself, or else. Question: Or else what?
   Tough talk is often just that -- talk. Threatening leaders of a sovereign nation to "behave" raises the issue of consequences if they don't do as they're told.
   That's the kind of thing parents say to children. But in the real world of international relations, such talk is well beyond foolish. It courts the danger of a shooting war.
   It's time the president of the United States learned that he is no longer the high school bully who gets sent to a military academy for punching out a teacher.
   Nor is he the lout who brags about grabbing women by their private parts because "when you're a celebrity, they let you do anything."
   Nor is he the real estate mogul who stiffs contractors on the spurious excuse that they didn't do a good enough job.
   Nor is he the political candidate who thinks it's OK to insult a federal judge over the jurist's ethnic heritage and therefore cannot preside fairly over a trial.
    Now, as president, when he throws insults and vilification, if not downright lies, at independent nations and their leaders, as well as numerous federal judges who rule against him in cases involving legal and constitutional issues, there are serious consequences.
   It's more than just negative publicity or being taken out of school.
   Words matter. Facts matter. Truth matters. Actions matter.
   To talk and act as if they don't matter as long as others do what they're told is especially dangerous when the schoolyard bully has a finger on a nuclear war button.
   Others also have fingers.